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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I learnt a new trick yesterday ... Australian genies this one is for you

Whenever I want to download the Service File of an Australian soldier from the First World War I go to the National Archives of Australia, search for the record and then painstakingly download the record one page (jpeg images) at a time. I haven't downloaded the records for all of the WW1 people in my tree because it is such a painful process.

Down at the Society yesterday I was complaining to my friend Jackie about how long it took to download a 60 page file; Allan, another researcher who was sitting around the table with us emphathised with me. Jackie (a Mac girl) said that if I had a Mac I could download it as one file in .pdf format from the Mapping Our Anzacs site and I said "Well if you can do it on a Mac I will be able to do it on a PC."

I fired up my little laptop, found my soldier on Mapping Our Anzacs by using the See other search options on the bottom right of the screen, and in the search by name box entered his family name. Once his entry came update I clicked on the image of his record on the right hand side of the page.

When the next page opened up I selected the Print option and waited for a while as the file downloaded .

Once that happened a window appeared with a Print as pdf option, I selected that, added a meaningful filename and, hey presto, I had a copy of the file on my laptop in one sequence rather than as a collection of jpeg images. This sort of file is much smaller and so much easier to browse.

Now, dear readers, you may have known how to do this already but it was a revelation to me (and Allan). We are so grateful to Jackie for teaching us this new trick.

It's amazing what one can learn by sitting around a table and chatting about research with one's mates.

14 comments:

I downloaded more than a dozen family records in the background last night while working on other stuff. It's fantastic. If a record is hard to find by name eg John Smith one can search by Place of Birth or Place of Enlistment.